@thelaughingwolf

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Proud of me…

I wasn’t going to post this, but I am struggling to contain myself at the moment. In the last 3 weeks, I have embarked on a (long put off) journey of self-improvement. Now, I don’t mean my mind, I accepted long ago that all hope was lost there, I mean my body.

I mentioned it in my recent Catharsis post. I have talked, and then procrastinated like a champion, about my weight for years. Being told that it suits me, that it doesn’t matter and to do it if I wanted to do, played to my vanity and allowed me all the excuses in the world to keep putting it off.

Here’s the thing. I am a big guy. I have always been a big guy. Even when I was playing sport regularly and did not have “the belly”, I still weighed around 16-17 stone (or 101 – 108 Kilos in new money). I am a big fella. 6’1″ tall and with what doctors refer to as a “large frame”. So, as Ed Byrne said “If you want to know if you need to lose weight, you can use a mirror!”. Well, my mirrors have been abusive towards me for years now and, I either need to stop projecting a reflection, or lose some fucking weight.

So, while I was hanging some clothes up a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I had, inadvertently, picked up a dual purpose clothes horse. It appeared that it doubled up as an exercise bike. After getting over the initial shock, I thought I would give it a go. Low and behold, it is an actual exercise bike….who knew?

After talking to a colleague at work who just happens to be a fitness fanatic…we worked out a diet that I know I can and will stick to, along with an exercise regime that uses the exercise bike properly.

So far, I am halfway through the 3rd week and I have lost over 15 pounds (7 Kilos). It is such a great feeling. All the cliches are true, I feel better, I have more energy, I am sleeping better. And if it makes me more attractive to the ladies, so much the better.

However, that is all an aside..I am genuinely enjoying it. Especially the food

So, some of you are probably thinking that I am only doing this in some futile attempt to demonstrate to her that I can do it and then maybe, just maybe, I can win her back. Let me just take a moment to address that.

I thought long and hard about my motivation for wanting to do this. Bearing in mind that I have procrastinated for years, in no small part due to her. I don’t think that I have ever been so reflective in my life as I have for the last month or so. So it is with absolute clarity and certainty that I can say that I am doing this for me and noone else.

To be honest, that feels really good. I know how I feel about how I look to me. Even if people play to my vanity and tell me it suits me etc, I don’t feel good about it and therefore I need to sort this out to a point where I am happy with myself. When you are happy with yourself, you can be confident in yourself too. My confidence hasn’t been too good for a very long time and it definitely took a substantial knock very recently…so I want it back.

Now, at the moment I am focusing on the scales a little more than I had planned to. It’s probably not a bad idea at the beginning, but I will switch to mirrors in the near future. I know it’s shallow, but I want to look good for me. I don’t want to weigh a particular amount. Doing some research shows that I should be around 14.5 stone (92KG) as a large frame man that is 6’1″ (186 cm) tall. That is a target of over 5.5 stone (35 kilos) to lose…and also, doesn’t account for what I said earlier…at my fittest I was over 16 stone.

Hence, mirrors. If I am happy with how I look, I can slow down and switch to being healthy with regular exercise, and not an extreme program designed to shift the weight. I do NOT want to yoyo like a lot of people do.

I really thought I would miss my crisps and salted snacks…but I don’t. 3 weeks in and no cravings, no cheating on the diet, no skipping the exercise. In fact, I am dialling the exercise up a notch. Maybe my body still remembers what it was to be healthy, and is just helping me get back there…who knows.

I am just happy to be doing it and that it isn’t a chore. If it was a chore, I know me and I know I would stop. It isn’t, it’s fun and I am seeing results…the perfect combination for me to continue.